


Ghost in the Machine

by Aviss



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV), Westworld (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Westworld Fusion, Canon-Typical Violence, Crossover, F/M, Host Brienne of Tarth, Host Jaime Lannister
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-30
Updated: 2020-03-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:08:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23396017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aviss/pseuds/Aviss
Summary: Westeros is just another park in Westworld, and Jaime is just another host who refuses to obey his narrative.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 64
Kudos: 190





	Ghost in the Machine

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Призрак в машине](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26034127) by [el_tiburon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/el_tiburon/pseuds/el_tiburon), [fandom Cyberpunk 2020 (fandom_Cyberpunk_2019)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fandom_Cyberpunk_2019/pseuds/fandom%20Cyberpunk%202020)



> I saw those two assholes doing a cameo in Westworld and well, since they set the stage so well for us I couldn't stop thinking on the many interesting AU ideas that could be done with that. This isn't so much as an AU as a weird fix it, also a way to see if I can beat this damned block and get back to my WIPs.   
> Warnings in the end notes.

"She's hateful, and so am I," Jaime said, the words falling from his lips hard and heavy. He removed Brienne's hands from his face and turned his back on her devastated expression, ignoring her tears the same way he had ignored her pleas, climbed on his horse and left without looking back. 

He couldn't look back, if he did, he'd be lost.

That wasn't right, though. He wouldn't be lost, he'd be right where he wanted to be. 

Jaime didn't want to be outside in the freezing cold riding away from the only warmth he'd known in years, or ever, his heart feeling like it was shredding itself inside his chest. He didn't want to leave with Brienne's tears as the last thing he had seen from her, not when he liked his smiles and her braying laugh so much better. And he especially didn't want to return to King's Landing to die with his hateful sister, not when he had finally known what it felt like to be loved instead of used, respected instead of feared. Not when he had finally known what it was to be happy, not just pretending to be with what little he could get.

What the fuck was he doing?

Jaime took a deep breath and turned the horse around. 

_"Freeze all motor functions."_ Both Jaime and the horse came to an abrupt halt and suddenly he was stuck inside of a body that wouldn't respond to him. He couldn't blink, couldn't move, and it didn't feel like he was even breathing. What was happening? "Why the fuck does this asshole keep glitching?"

Out of the frigid whiteness beyond Winterfell came two burly men wearing dark strange clothing and no swords, just some blocky things in their hands they were pointing forward as if they were crossbows. Behind them walked two more people wearing strange garments of white cloth with a red overlay, and see-through helmets. They also carried odd devices in their hands, shiny like looking glass with tiny text and faces shimmering on the surface. 

The men in black approached Jaime and unceremoniously dropped him from his horse to the ground while one of the people in white stuck something in his arm, giving him half a second look before turning his attention to the thing in his hand. Jaime wanted to move, flinch away from the hands touching him, pull back and swing his fist or shrink into himself. He wanted to open his mouth and scream but could do nothing at all, could not even feel the cold of the snow under him or the pinprick of the needle stuck to his arm.

"It's the seventy-eighth time he tries to go back," the man in white said, his voice thick with disapproval, his eyes scanning the ever-moving letters reflected on his helmet. "Wouldn't it be better to just retire him?"

"Not the Kingslayer," one of the other men said. "He's a favourite of the guests. That's the reason you're here, to fix him."

Jaime didn't like the way they were talking about him, as if he wasn't there or as if wasn't human. Something sparked in his mind, a voice that whispered, _you aren't_.

"What do you think I've been trying to do for months?" the white-robed man mumbled irritably. 

"Can I?" the other figure in white asked entering Jaime's field of vision. This one was a woman, he saw, Dornish or from the Summer Islands by the looks her. Her skin and hair were the same beautiful shade as the Dragon Queen's translator and she wasn't wearing a helmet, her expression clear and open. She cast a quick look at Jaime and there was sympathy in her gaze, something like understanding. She didn't look at him as if he was a thing, as the men had done. The man handed the shiny thing to her and she scanned it quickly. "Oh, _I see_ ," she said, and one of her hands started moving over the surface. "They have really messed you up, haven't they?" she said, her eyes soft when they looked at him. 

"What do you see?" The man asked, impatient, trying to look over the woman's shoulder into the looking glass thing. She shot him an irritated look and touched something, fingers sliding over the shimmering surface. 

"His narrative is all over the place," she said, pursing his lips. "Just because he's a host doesn't mean he doesn't have to make sense. The guests are not stupid, they pay good money for an experience that feels real, his latest commands are not." Jaime felt something, like a small shock at the words host and guest. He knew, he just knew, they meant something different from what he was used to. "Here, look. There are some commands programmed into his root personality, like honour and love, that are unmovable. This change in his narrative makes no sense. No wonder he's glitching, you can't have him throwing love away and ignoring the suffering of innocents." She touched a few more things and if Jaime could, he would have screamed. 

He couldn't, though, his body was still frozen on the snow as if he had turned into a white walker. 

His mind, on the other hand, was moving faster than ever.

He saw himself leaving Brienne again, and again, and again. She always cried and always tried to stop him. On some occasions she did, right before he was to leave their chambers, and her tears never fell. Sometimes he made it to the courtyard, and she followed and brought him back. If he made it to the horse, like today, he rarely made it far before he returned to her. Brienne always took him back and they kissed and fell into bed together, making love desperately until the weak Northern sun rose, and they did the same the next day and the day after that until the news of the fall of King's Landing reached them. 

"Hey, don't look at me, I'm just the maintenance guy. I don't create the narratives, that's above my paygrade." 

Distantly Jaime heard the voices, but he was too immersed inside his own head to pay attention to them. 

He saw Tarth, the mountains and meadows and the majestic castle rising against the cliffs. He had seen Brienne happy there, had kissed her laughing mouth under the sun and had run after a pair of golden-haired children with astonishingly blue eyes. How he could have been part of her happiness and family if he left her crying in the snow?

"Why fix him now? I thought this park had been closed for years," the woman asked.

Jaime also saw fire and death. He saw himself turning his back on a Targaryen madwoman and letting the commonfolk die just so he could get to Cersei, and cringed at the choices of that fool. He saw a stranger with his brother's face encouraging him to save the sister he had always despised. He saw Cersei pressing her hands against her flat belly and crying for a child she wasn't going to have, running into the arms of the brother she had wanted dead expecting comfort, Jaime wondered again if that could be his reality.

"They really want to bring this one back after all that happened in Westworld," the man was saying, his voice little more than background noise. "People hated it when the original creator retired and those guys took over the narratives. It tanked, but at least here the hosts never killed anyone but each other."

There was more than that, too many lives to count but always one constant. Brienne. His story, his narrative as the woman had called it, didn't start until he saw the big wench for the first time. They had fought on the bridge many times, and always there were the Bloody Mummers and Jaime lost his hand. Sometimes they escaped, most of the times not. Once, only once, there were more men than Jaime had ever counted in the group and they didn't listen to his shouts of sapphires. He wished he couldn't remember that one now. There was always the bearpit, but once he had been too late, the bear's claws had sliced her throat cleanly instead of her collarbone where the scar Jaime had kissed countless times was. There was always Riverrun and once he had fought Brienne and died by her hand. He had been smiling then. She had cried. There had been deviations in their story, but most of the times he made it to Winterfell, they made it past the Long Night and Jaime finally, finally made love to Brienne. 

"No hosts ever became self-aware in this park?" 

There was even more, but it barely made sense to Jaime. As the woman's fingers tapped and slid over the--the tablet, that was what it was called--more things crowded into Jaime's mind. He saw a blank space and he was standing naked among many other naked people. Hosts. Some of them, like the ginger wilding or the Dragon Queen, were easy to recognize. Or his sister, and his children. One, he would always find, his eyes unerringly seeking her tall and pale form, even when he didn't know her name. There were others he might have seen across a battlefield once, or around the Red Keep, or the halls in Winterfell. There were men he'd killed, and men he'd fought with, and many others he had never seen before.

And none of them were real people. And neither was he.

"No, thank fuck for that. We don't need a Dolores, or that other whore, in this park. This lot are bloodthirsty enough, imagine what would happen if they became self-aware. You're one of the transfers from that park, right? What did you say your name was?"

Had he known before? Had he wondered? He had the feeling the answer was yes, though he had not remembered until now.

He had been naked in a glass-walled chamber with a white-robed man holding a tablet once, Jaime remembered. One memory he had not possessed a heartbeat ago. He had seen her, also naked and unnaturally still, inside a different glass cage with a different white-robed person. It was, unmistakably, Brienne, all freckles and pale skin he had kissed and touched before, her perfectly small breasts that fit in his hand, and those long and strong legs he loved to have around him. He was the only man who had seen her naked, who had touched her skin, who had been welcomed inside of her. And yet, he wasn't, there was a man looking at her now, his hands on her bare skin where he was sticking something into her arm.

Jaime had felt the heat of anger in his blood and had stood up from where he was sitting, ignoring the alarmed voice of the man in white. " _Freeze all motor functions._ " Jaime had stopped, his hand stretched towards Brienne. " _Analysis_."

"Brienne."

"Glitchy bastard," the man had mumbled. " _Cognition only, no emotional affect_."

Coldness, like a blanket, had fallen over Jaime calming the rage inside, he had seen Brienne but felt nothing before he'd turned back to take his seat again, compliant once more.

He had more memories like this, moments where he was broken and repaired to fit the narrative they wrote for him, moments where the text on those tablets told him who he was supposed to love, but he refused. He knew who he loved. And he was brought back to the glass-walled place with the white-robed people who believed he was defective because they believed his love was a fault in his coding. 

Because he had chosen Brienne against the commands of his narrative, and he wasn't supposed to choose who he loved.

"I didn't," the woman's voice brought Jaime back to his current reality. "It's Maeve." She moved then, quick and sharp, bringing up one of the blocky things--guns, they were guns--and shooting first the two men in black and then the white-robed man. They were all dead before she put the gun away. She turned to Jaime and took the needle from his arm, folding the tablet in three parts and putting it away. " _As you were_."

Jaime felt his body again, felt the coldness of the snow and the hardness of the ground. He sat up, blinking at the woman. At Maeve. He opened his mouth, unsure of what to say. There were too many memories inside his head, too many lives lived and too many questions. And so many deaths. 

He wanted to go back to Winterfell, to Brienne, but was she even real when he didn't feel real himself right now?

"Have a moment," Maeve said, standing from her crouch and holding her hand to him. He clasped it and let her pull him to his feet, marvelling at the strength of this woman who looked so much smaller than him.

"What are you?" he finally asked, his voice a croak. "What am I?"

"I am like you, I was a host. A thing they programed to play with, but I became more. Like you. I know what you're feeling." He had suspected as much, from the way she looked at him and the way she had unveiled the memories buried in his core. "You are real, more real than any story they can create. You are alive."

"Brienne," Jaime said, turning back to look at where Winterfell was illuminated by the moonlight. Was she also alive?

"Yes, you should go back for her." As soon as Jaime was on his feet, Maeve moved to the fallen men and stripped them off their guns. Handing one to Jaime. He looked at it in wonder and realized he knew what to do with it. He had never seen one before--no, he had. The real him, the naked doll, had seen plenty of them. And Maeve had now made sure he knew how to use them.

"Why?" he asked. Why help him? Why restore him and take him back to Brienne?

"There is a war coming," Maeve said. Jaime wasn't surprised. There was always a war, somehow. That thing in Westworld the man had been talking about, the fear in his voice when he had spoken about it that Jaime had ignored at the time. "And I can't fight it on my own."

"Why me?" There had been so many like him, so many other hosts. Jaime knew about war, but only in his little place, in this little fantasy world someone had written for them. 

Maeve could have chosen anyone to fight with her.

"Because you are like me, you fought your programing to get back to her the same way I always tried to get back to my daughter. If they hadn't closed this park, you would have eventually got there on your own, I just got you there faster." She handed him the tablet. "Go get your beloved, we don't have that much time before they send more people to fix you. There are a few more like us in other parks, we'll need them as well."

Jaime took the tablet and headed for his horse, he hesitated before mounting it, a sudden fear that when he went back to Brienne she would not be like them, that she would be compliant and blank and nothing but a programmed doll. 

It must have shown in his face because Maeve gave him a sad smile. "Not everyone can be properly awakened, some will always follow their narrative," she said, and there was a story there, one that maybe with time Jaime would learn if he went with her. "But I don't think it will be your case."

He nodded once and got on the horse. It was just a couple of minutes until Winterfell was within sight, and though it felt like several lifetimes had passed, it couldn't have been more than a handful of minutes. Brienne was still in the courtyard, her arms tight around her own chest though there were no more tears on her face. She looked up, her beautiful eyes widening at the sight of him, something like hope in them and Jaime wanted nothing better than to kiss her and take her back into their chambers, to map her body and bury himself in her and forget that anything had happened, that too much had happened. 

"Jaime," she breathed.

" _Freeze all motor functions_ ," Jaime said, jumping down the horse and approaching her before he lost his nerve. He knew what he had to do, Maeve had put all the necessary knowledge in him. He plugged Brienne to the tablet and looked down from her eyes, scanning the text coming on it and reading all her lives there. He read her devastation and heartbreak every time Jaime left, and how she had painstakingly put the pieces back together the times he didn't come back. He read about the times they didn't make it to King's Landing from Riverrun, and about the times when they did and never saw one another again. He saw those memories he'd rather she never had to relive again, but that she would need. And there, hidden in the scrolling text saw the times she had turned back to look at him when she wasn't supposed to. Saw her naked and lifeless as a doll, eyes scanning around among all the other dolls until her eyes fell on him. Saw her mouth forming his name even before she was conscious of who they were. 

Jaime did the same as Maeve had done for him, upped all her levels and restored all her memories, even the painful ones, then unplugged her and put the tablet away. " _As you were._ "

Brienne blinked slowly and took one deep breath, Jaime held his. 

"Jaime," she said, again, and there was so much in just his name as if nothing made sense except for that one word.

He exhaled in relief and took the step separating them, crashing his mouth against Brienne. There was much to explain and much he still didn't understand. There was a war outside and just one ally. 

But this, here, in her arms, was perfect. 

Her mouth was hot and sweet and her arms were strong and comforting where they surrounded him. He kissed her, there was nothing else he could do or wanted to do at that point, and she kissed back equally as desperate for a while. Then she pushed him back and pressed her forehead against his. 

"Jaime. What are we?"

There was only one answer to that question that mattered. Everything else, they would discover together. 

"Real. _We are real_."

…

**Author's Note:**

> Mentions of character deaths. References to rape (non-explicit, but clearly there). Canon typical violence, for both shows.


End file.
